


Dust Bowl Dance

by bodysnatch3r



Series: Dworin Week 2016 [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7548229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong>Days Two and Three: Jokes and Conflict & Reconciliation.</strong>
</p><p>Thorin loves the way he says his name the most, the way it's spoken like it's made of stars and dirt and solid rock, the stuff the foundations of Heaven must be made of, the stuff the earth must feast on.<em> Not this simple</em>, he wants to say, he is not used to wounds healing over in a matter of words. His cuts fester, after all, for days and months on end, a horrible affair that dumps liters and liters of poisonous blood into him, until it's hard to tell where the flesh begins and where the guilt's made its own home.</p><p>Things shouldn't fix this easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust Bowl Dance

**SUMMER  
1983**

Thorin slams the door behind himself, a flurry of nighttime in white bermuda shorts and a shirt that's suddenly much too tight around the neck. The air around him screams and swarms, climbs up to the depths of his boiling blood, finding his heartbeat and forcing it to follow the rhythm of the song that's currently drawling through the air, as thick if not thicker than the cigarette smoke, muffled scraping of teeth against the door behind him. He hates it, suddenly brutally violently, the same way he hates this skin his body's found itself wrapped in, to the point of wanting to claw himself (itself) out from the depths of his solar plexus, fold himself upon himself, a triangle suspended in the air before it vanishes.

Dwalin shoves the door open, behind him, only Thorin can't see him, can't know it's him, until--

“What the _fuck_ was that about?”

He doesn't turn to watch nor listen, unwilling to witness Dwalin's face or any way his rage might manifest. He's slightly drunk. They both are, and it crashes ruinous through them.

“Look at me. _Look at me_.”

Ruinous and devastating, every single inch of it.

Thorin _daring_ to keep his face hidden even when Dwalin is burning at the seams, a body made to rush through the world like the world alone knows how to put him out or down which is, when all is said and done, so much the very same thing. Dwalin grabs Thorin's shoulder and Thorin rolls it off of him, and if his fingertips had left seared holes of burnt flesh it would have been the same. Instead they leave nothing, if not Dwalin turning Thorin again, rougher, harder, forcing those eyes if not into his, at least close, because face-to-face is something Dwalin never gets or is granted, in moments like these.

Only this time he does, he does like a spark that sears from the base of his spine to the base of his skull, and when Dwalin finds himself face to face with those eyes, he thinks he didn't really want to, but there's ground he has to hold and questions he needs answered, despite the way the answers will be snarled at him.

“You can call your friends back in there that. Not me.”

Flavour always stays the same, when you're used to the texture of the food.

“What? _Queen_? It slipped out, it came out, I'm--”

Thorin flinches and Dwalin doesn't stop because in moments like this he just cannot know how, “ _This_ is what this is about?”

“ _As if you didn't know it'd upset me_.”

The music that drowns their words like an added layer of discomfort, watery rhythm that drags their reasonings and justifications out to sea, but Dwalin's expression is what it is, in the quiet little snap, and it seems it's his time to snarl, in a spotlight made of anger he can't really seem to care about bridling, “It was a joke. _It was a joke_. Listen, I'm drunk, Thorin--”

“Poor choice of a joke. But after all, what else could I expect from a boy who grew up in _Pollok_?”

The tone slips underneath Dwalin's neck and tears the skin from his right ear to his left, so maddeningly easily too, and he thinks he should be used to Thorin drunk and sharp and hurt, he thinks he should be used to people calling him poor like it's a good enough reason to spit on him.

Thorin scans Dwalin's face as he waits for an answer from those pretty, damning lips of his. None comes. Dwalin swallows, shakes his head and clenches his jaw, but not a word leaves his mouth, not a word nor a whisper, until he brings his face too close to Thorin's for it to be anything but rage, for it to be anything but him to try and prove a point--

“You say that about me again, like it's an insult, and we're _done_ , Blue Eyes.”

Thorin shoves him off of him with both hands splayed on Dwalin's chest, palms a weapon where nothing else will make the blood stop overflowing from his heart into his rage-lined belly.

“Same goes to you, MacFundin.”

And it's Dwalin's turn to curse the eyes, to curse the beer, to curse the floor he's staring at all of a sudden.

* * *

He finds the sunlight greets him like a cat, stretched across his back, a little thing of light that purrs and purrs warmth between his shoulder blades. He turns his head, slightly, and finds the other side of the mattress empty. Dwalin stumbles, standing, grabs his shirt absent-mindedly. He doesn't put it on, though, instead finds Thorin turned before he can, back to him, staring out the window. Dwalin looks at him for a moment and then drops his shirt back onto the floor.

“Is this about last night?”

There's a soft sigh that Dwalin doesn't hear. Instead, he watches as the sunlight that's kissing Thorin finds the same spot it found on him, between the shoulders, and Thorin doesn't answer.

“Thorin.”

The quiet low tone he takes when there's little room in between words for pauses. Thorin doesn't turn, bends his knuckle to the glass, raps against it lightly-- not loud, not loud, no room that he can fill, but there, a movement for himself, the softest knock on wood a sound he makes to drown out, for a moment, the emptiness he's chosen to substitute the rage. Rage is much too much dangerous, after all, an emotion he is unaccustomed to when he finds himself unable to control it or keep it down. But if there is one thing sunlight brings, it is a clear head and much-needed emptiness.

“Thorin,” again, like a hand outstretched that is his to decide to take. Thorin sighs again in response, this time loud enough for Dwalin to hear, loud enough to feel like the rotten alcohol at the back of his mouth, burning as bright.

“Dwalin, I'm sorry.”

For once he doesn't want to let this hang, doesn't want to let the sex be the glue that knits their bones back together, doesn't want it to be the weight that keeps them grounded. It hadn't worked, anyway, had just been a symphony of skin to chase itself in circles, a cacophony that had brought nothing, led to nothing if not nerves satisfying their own worthless cravings. It had been empty, a soft shell for something far from soft, fueled by the coldness of Thorin's eyes, by the tone of the bitterness, by the taste of the medicine they'd forced each other to swallow.

“I know.” Dwalin says, all edges smoothed down to two small soft words.

Does, he though? Does he understand the way it must be shown, the notion that Thorin feels like his knees have been hollowed, that the empty has already taken his feet and his calves, that it will take his thighs and his hips and his stomach, his heart and his chest and end with his throat, and then anything that isn't full will be filled, and it will be filled with _pain_.

“I'm sorry, too. Sometimes I don't think.”

“You were drunk,” Thorin murmurs, and maybe part of him thinks it is enough to absolve Dwalin of any silent little hurt he's caused him.

“It doesn't matter. I still hurt you.”

“I was drunk, too.”

“And you apologized. And I'm apologizing too, right now, right here.”

A pause.

“You hurt me. You really, really hurt me. I don't like it when you use certain words, not with me. And I said what I said because I got angry. It might not make it better, but it's why I did.” Thorin says. He finally decides to turn around, almost hadn't noticed he'd spent the entire conversation looking away. Dwalin nods, acknowledges the hurt and accepts the reasoning.

“I am so, _so_ sorry. I wasn't thinking. I'd never-- I'd never hurt you purposefully. You _know_ that. Thorin...”

Thorin loves the way he says his name the most, the way it's spoken like it's made of stars and dirt and solid rock, the stuff the foundations of Heaven must be made of, the stuff the earth must feast on. _Not this simple_ , he wants to say, he is not used to wounds healing over in a matter of words. His cuts fester, after all, for days and months on end, a horrible affair that dumps liters and liters of poisonous blood into him, until it's hard to tell where the flesh begins and where the guilt's made its own home.

Things shouldn't fix this easy.

“...It slipped. It just came out. I'm used to other things with other people I know. You're more...”

“Sensitive?” Thorin smiles.

Dwalin smiles back, “Yeah. Sensitive.”

But after all, they've done it all: point A to point B, all the _I'm sorry_ 's that they needed, and the explanations. Enough to calm.

“Can I get a hug?” Thorin asks, last appeal in the hopes of finding something to ground him, make him feel like he's not evanescent.

“Sure thing, Blue Eyes.”

Dwalin buries a hand in Thorin's hair, against the back of his head, presses his lips to his cheek, drags him close enough to feel his heart start beating in a way that feels closer to human.

 


End file.
